The Moment You Were Gone (40 page)

She didn't know how long she stood like that, watching them. A thought came into her mind and she held it there: she could leave now, simply walk down the road away from them all and never come back. Then she took a deep breath and made her way slowly towards her home. She pushed the front door quietly and went into the warm, crowded room. She opened her mouth to join in the singing, and nobody had even noticed that she had been gone, or saw that now she had returned, to be with them once more.

P.S.

This is the last time I'm going to write in here. For a while I needed to pour out my feelings – to the mother I had never met, to the parents I had always had, to myself above all – but I don't think I do any more. The urgency has died away, the frantic need to know and the fear of what I would discover. So what have I discovered? Not who I am. I don't think one ever fully does that. Maybe something about love: Mum and Dad have loved me without ever asking for anything in return; they loved me so much they were even willing to let me go. Perhaps one day I can be a parent like that. That's what you do with
love, you hand it on. You receive love and you give it, and stronger than genes, thicker than blood, it binds us and it sets us free. That's what I believe, anyway.

So I guess this is the end. Although it's never really the end, is it? Just, the words stop.

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First published 2007

Copyright © Nicci Gerrard, 2007

The moral right of the author has been asserted

‘First Day of My Life', Lyrics by Conor Oberst, © Bedrooms, Bedrooms and
Spiders/Sony/ATV Songs LLC. All rights reserved

‘You're Just in Love', Words & Music by Irving Berlin, © 1950 Irving Berlin Music Corp.
All rights administered by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd, London W6 8BS. Reproduced by permission.

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-141-90048-3